Salon: Gordon Parks

Gordon Parks: The New Tide, Early Work 1940–1950 focuses on the first and most formative decade of the groundbreaking artist’s 60-year career, beginning with his full immersion in the Chicago Black Renaissance. In this salon program, Gillian Johns (Associate Professor of English at Oberlin College) will join in conversation with Daniel Gray-Kontar (Executive Artistic Director of Twelve Literary Arts) and Tonika Johnson (Chicago-based photographer and activist) for a conversation about how Parks influenced and was inspired by a network of creative and intellectual figures, including Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright, and Langston Hughes, and the ongoing influence and relevance of Parks’s work today.